Blog

#edtech #edchat #elemchat #elearning
The other day I was having lunch with a fellow teacher and I asked her how was enjoying her Atomic Learning (AL) account. “Oh, I use YouTube instead,” she told me. Although I was about to freak out, I took a deep breath and I asked her to explain.

She told me that whenever she had a question about how to use a piece of software she just went to YouTube instead of her Atomic Learning account. I guess that I had become so addicted to AL that I never considered using anything else so I explained to her that she was wasting her valuable time searching on YouTube when she could do much better by using her AL account. We agreed to meet during her planning period so I could show her what I was talking about.

At the agreed time we met in her room to do a little one on one training on how to properly use her AL account. So I with my laptop and this teacher with her desktop computer had a little head to head challenge: Atomic Learning Vs. YouTube.

I asked her for a common software question that she would look up on YouTube. She said that last week she wanted to know how to export a chart from Excel and put it into a PowerPoint presentation. I asked her to show me how she found the right video…

First she went to YouTube and then she searched for the video she wanted. Hundreds of videos came back to her inquiry and then she proceeded to watch each one – looking for the one that would teach her what she wanted to know. She thought she found the right one, but then it turned out to be for the new PowerPoint and not for the 2003 version that we use at our school. Finally, 17 minutes later, she found the one.

Now it was my turn…

I logged into Atomic Learning, clicked on the “Find Answer to Tech Question” button. Entered “import excel chart” and then selected the filter of PowerPoint. 5 answers came back and I selected the PowerPoint 2003 one and soon we were watching the 1 minute video. Total time: 2 minutes 13 seconds to find and watch the right video.